Silas Marner / Brother Jacob

by George Eliot

Mary Ann Evans known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–63), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–72) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside.Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.Mary Ann Evans was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. She was the third child of Robert Evans (1773–1849) and Christiana Evans (née Pearson, 1788–1836), the daughter of a local mill-owner. She spelled her name differently at different Mary Anne was the spelling used by her father for the baptismal record and she uses this spelling in her earliest letters. Within her family, however, it was spelled Mary Ann. By 1852, she had changed to Marian, but she reverted to Mary Ann in 1880 after she married John Cross. Mary Ann Cross (George Eliot) appears on her memorial stone.

Silas Marner
"I think Silas Marner holds a higher place than any of the author's works," said Henry James of this classic George Eliot novel. When a little girl wanders into a random house one cold night, the lives of two different men are about to change dramatically. The house is owned by the town outsider, Silas Marner, and upon finding the girl’s mother dead in the snow, he decides to adopt her. Little does he know that the girl’s biological father is the rich Godfrey Cass, who now considers himself off the hook and free to marry the girl he loves. Published in 1862, Silas Marner is a simple and subtle story that explores the relationship between the individual and the community.

Brother Jacob
On a visit to town young David Faux sees a high class confectioner’s shop. It leads him to believe that confectioners must be the happiest and most popular of tradesmen, and so when it comes to the time for him to take up a trade he becomes a confectioner. But when David finds that the reality of life as a confectioner has more work and less status than he imagined, he decides that his future lies elsewhere. Some years later and some miles away a new confectioner’s shop opens. The proprietor, Edward Freely, establishes himself in society and is clearly set to make a great match with the local squire’s daughter. Despite being one of her lesser known novels, Brother Jacob provides a lighter introduction to George Eliot.

400 pages, Library Binding

First published March 1, 1919

About the author

Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside.
Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.

Reviews

[Dona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Silas Marner by George Eliot (1948)